Being conscious is truly nature’s mystery. How does our brain create our ability to experience what we feel and think? What we experience seems so private and immeasurable from the outside world, this is known as the hard problem of consciousness. The Relativistic Theory of Consciousness is a new theory that proposes a solution to the hard problem using tools from physics. It uses a relativistic approach, expressing that our subjective experience is a relativistic state. It is then measured differently by different observers. In this project we want to check if the theory is correct. We will use EEG data to test the prediction of the theory. The implications of such a theory are huge. It can be applied to determine which animal was the first in the evolutionary process to have consciousness, when a fetus or baby begins to be conscious, which patients with consciousness disorders are conscious, and which AI systems already today have a low degree (if any) of consciousness. 

In cognitive science, when we talk about consciousness we mean our capacity to experience ourselves and the world. As it’s often put:

“If there is something that it is like to be a creature, then that creature has consciousness.” (What is it like to be a bat? by Thomas Nagel).

This is the canonical definition used in the field. It doesn’t fully capture consciousness, but it provides a useful starting point for understanding what researchers are trying to investigate.

The hard problem of consciousness arises because it doesn’t seem possible to reduce subjective experiences themselves to brain activity. In other words, it seems impossible to show that conscious experiences are simply identical to neural processes. There is no clear identity between patterns of neural firing and the experience itself.

For example, when I experience an apple in front of me, I can indeed identify a representation of that apple in my brain’s neural network. But the properties of neural firing patterns are very different from the properties of the apple I actually experience, so the two cannot be identical. The firing pattern merely represents the apple, it is not the experience of the apple itself. Otherwise, if the neural representation of an apple was the actual experience, then when I would measure in the lab this neural representation, I would actually measure the experience of the apple itself. But this is not the case and I need to ask the subject what experience he has.

When I experience an apple (first person perspective), what I experience is a three-dimensional, round, red apple. Neural firing patterns, by contrast, describe variables such as firing rates, chemical releases, and electrical potentials across neuron membranes. How, then, do we get from these variables to the experience itself- the vivid perception of a three-dimensional, round, red apple? It doesn’t seem possible to make that transition, because we always remain within the domain of neural firing patterns (third person perspective).

So the question arises: how can the brain produce consciousness at all?

This is where my theory comes in. It attempts to show that consciousness is a physical property, like other physical properties, even if it cannot be reduced to something else. The theory explains how it can be through an extension of the principle of relativity.

Consciousness studies is an under funded subject especially for new theories that are outside the box like our theory. We think it is too important to leave it in the ivory tower, so we decided to approach you. After all, this theory will revolutionize the way that we think about humanity and about technology, so why not getting humanity and technology involve in making it happen. In fact, in the past science was funded by royalty patrons. Today, you are the patrons. Let's make a new way of funding science. Let's create this research together.